Friday, 31 January 2014

Published by Jimmy Simond on Friday, 31 January 2014 |&nbspNo comments

As per recent reports, Digg is presently testing a system that could see the viral news aggregator run over its original content on the homepage of Digg.com. This would certainly be a new direction for the betaworks-backed service that has historically collected the most interesting stories from the web on its website, when they’ve been voted on by Digg users. The users initially noted the test when a particular story on the homepage of Digg had an interesting source, not another blog or website, but Digg.com website itself. Clicking on the link to the post in question, it was found out that the resulting page was there under the brand “Digg Original”.

As per opinions by the Creative and Editorial Director, the concept of Digg Originals is still in their experimental phase. They think that Digg has the potential to be like any other editorial outlet, those which feature freelancer content. There was a piece we commissioned to be written for Digg and therefore there was never a question of where else they could live. What Weiner means by “commissioned” is paid and the company is of the opinion that it offers pretty competitive rates. Presently, there are no such rules around the process apart from the fact that the editorial team of Digg will firmly control anything that is about to be live on the website, whether a Digg Original or any other type of aggregated content.

As long as the content adheres to the editorial mission of the website of providing the most interesting and the best stuff, they’re pretty open to all such changes. Digg has already run “Originals”, similar to the one that’s about to appear on Digg. In the previous cases, it however seems that content has been written by betaworks staff. Digg has no fixed timetable about when it will start posting more and more original stories but they hope to work it out within a short period of time. They don’t want to do content for content’s sake and there will probably be a little bit of time before you run a long piece as this.

The company, instead is trying to sketch out some other shorter items that can be done in-house by the own editorial team or even outsourced to other freelancers. Such pieces may also involve video at some point of time, as videos have always been one of the fastest growing things, prompting the site to open a separate Video section since last November. Although it can be noted that the original story promoted on Thursday homepage was placed in the marqee position, but it didn’t generate clicks. It is now being said that the Digg effect is back, the new Digg is more about marrying the concept of trending post with the touch that comes from the eye of an editor and this deserves consideration.

Therefore with this new Digg Original from Digg, it will be a new place to be at. It is presently only for those vetted by the Digg staff and presently it has no plans to directly compete with Medium by launching their very own blogging platform.